ENT
Enters Location
Foot in the Door
Fires when the player enters a specific location card. Useful for delivering events tied to reaching a particular room or area.
A timeline is a condition attached directly to the player that evaluates silently on every world turn - not a map marker or a quest log entry. When the condition is satisfied, the timeline fires a world event - dialogue, a reward, a revelation, a branching encounter - and then removes itself. The player may not know the timeline is there. They only know what the world does when it expires.
An NPC gives an instruction. The player goes about their business. At some point, without a countdown visible on the screen, the world responds to what the player has done. The seam between quest and event is invisible by design.
Trigger mode watches for a specific player action or situation. The timeline holds its condition — a location visited, a creature killed, a spell cast — and checks it against the player's most recent turn on every tick. Nothing happens until the condition matches. When it does, the timeline fires immediately.
Timer mode operates on a simple countdown. The timeline is given a number of turns and begins counting down once the player has fully spent their action points for the turn. When the count reaches zero, the timeline fires regardless of what the player has done in the interim. Timers are used for events that should happen after a period of time rather than in response to a specific choice — an enemy reinforcement arriving, a consequence catching up.
Every trigger-mode timeline watches for one of ten conditions. Each condition corresponds to something the player does or encounters in the normal course of play — no special action is required to satisfy a timeline beyond whatever the trigger demands.
Fires when the player enters a specific location card. Useful for delivering events tied to reaching a particular room or area.
Fires when the player moves away from a specific location. Can mark the moment something is left behind or a decision becomes permanent.
Fires after the player has killed a specified creature a given number of times. The count decrements with each qualifying kill and fires when it reaches the last.
Fires when the player casts a specific spell. Useful for consequences tied to using particular magic, regardless of the target or outcome.
Fires when a specific skill card is used. Skills cover crafting, fishing, mining, runework, and other practiced disciplines beyond combat.
Fires when a specific card is used from inventory or equipment. A broad trigger that can respond to almost any deliberate player action involving a named item.
Fires when a specific container is opened. Containers include chests, crates, barrels, and locked boxes — anything that holds items behind an interaction.
Fires when the player successfully crafts a specific item. The trigger checks the result of the craft, not the ingredients — what matters is what was made.
Fires when a specific card appears in any position in the player's current room. Sight does not require interaction — the card need only be present and visible.
Fires when a specific card enters the player's inventory or equipment. Acquisition is the stricter version of sight — the item must be in hand, not merely nearby.
Satisfying a timeline's condition does not simply mark a task complete. It fires an event into the world and removes the timeline from the player entirely. The act is clean and final.
When a timeline's condition is met, it immediately fires the event it was linked to. That event can be anything the event system supports: a dialogue encounter, a reward delivery, a revelation of lore, a branching choice with consequences, or the appearance of a new NPC. The timeline has no knowledge of what the event will do — it only knows to hand control to it. Once the event fires, the timeline removes itself from the player and does not return.
Timer-mode timelines decrement once per world tick, but only after the player has fully spent their action points for the turn. A player who ends their turn with points remaining does not advance the timer. Timers measure actual turns spent acting, not raw turns taken - ending a turn without doing anything does not move the clock.
A player can hold any number of timelines simultaneously. All of them are evaluated every world tick. In practice this means that a player pursuing multiple quests or caught in a region with several pending consequences may have several timelines waiting at once, each watching for its own condition independently. There is no limit imposed on how many can fire in the same turn if multiple conditions are satisfied at once.
Timelines are not the only way the world keeps time. Some cards are local clocks on the board. They sit in a room, wait for their interval to pass, and then create new resources or enemies nearby if the room can receive them.
A spawner card belongs to its room. Unlike a timeline, it is not attached to the player and does not watch for a quest condition. It changes the location around it, making the dungeon feel alive even when the player is pursuing something else.
Spawner cards do not create something every turn. Each one waits through its own rhythm of world time. When enough time has passed, the card attempts to produce its next result and then begins waiting again.
A spawner may be tied to one possible result or a small pool of possible results. The new card can be a resource worth harvesting, an enemy that increases danger, or another board presence that changes how the room should be approached.
The room must have an open side space for the new card to appear. Some rooms can also contain a counter-presence that suppresses the spawner. A blocked or suppressed spawner does not provide a renewable output until the conditions change.